Luton chief not overly impressed by Lee's reaction to substitution

Hatters boss Nathan Jones wasn’t overly impressed by the reaction of Olly Lee after he was substituted inside the opening half an hour of yesterday’s 2-0 defeat at Chesterfield.

With Jak McCourt’s penalty adding to Joe Rowley’s earlier strike, it saw Jones take off the midfielder for Harry Cornick and alter his system in an attempt to salvage something from the game.

Lee was clearly unhappy at being withdrawn so early, shrugging off his manager's handshake as he took his place on the bench, and when asked about it, the Luton chief said: “I want to see certain elements of it (disappointment), but I’d rather see him working hard and putting tackles in and winning his 50/50s and out of possession being better.

“Then if he wants to be petulant with anything, or if he wants to be unhappy, then do it and I won’t bring him off.

“But that’s by the by. He wasn’t the only one, I could have brought off anyone it’s just because of the change of shape, he was the unlucky one.”

Although admitting he wasn't keen to change things so early into the game, Jones insisted the performance he was witnessing gave him very little choice.

The boss continued: "We felt we had to change formation a little bit as we were getting exposed in wide areas.

"Because of our lack of press, Chesterfield were basically able to do anything that they wanted with the ball because we didn’t go and press them with any intensity, we had to change shape.

“I don’t like doing it, I didn’t want to do it, and it didn’t make us any better. Well, it made us slightly more solid towards the half time interval otherwise we could have conceded again.

"I don’t like doing that, but if we need to to do it, we need to and players have to start well, players have to be on the front foot.

"To be 2-0 down and looking like if we don't do something, it’s not going to change, is a problem.”

Midfielder Andrew Shinnie conceded that none of Town's outfield players had been on their game during the defeat, adding: "The manager's got to make a decision and he can take off who he wants to take off.

"Olly came off, we weren't quite at it, but I felt like when we did get it down in the final third we were looking quite dangerous when we got the ball moving.

"Probably the other side of the game, our pressing, which we're normally quite good at, just wasn't there and they were first to everything which is disappointing.

"But we cant dwell on it, we've got to move on now and get back to winning games."